Letters to the Editor 08-01-13

Eryn Brown says many young parents cannot afford diapers because disposable diapers are so expensive.

Some parents, she writes, may even go without food to buy them and she seems to suggest that perhaps diaper purchases should be subsidized. My research indicates that washable cloth diapers can be bought for about $16 a dozen.

My mother had to carry wash water up a hill and wash my diapers by hand on a scrub board. I almost always had modern facilities available to wash them, although a few times when I was using a laundromat and was broke I washed them in our bath tub with a plunger. I had three children in diapers at one time and we were living without any subsidies or food stamps on the pay of an E-2 Air Force enlistee.

Two dozen diapers are adequate for one baby if the parents are willing to get their hands a little dirty and do a little work. I wonder why Ms. Brown didn't suggest that instead of another government subsidy. By the way, neither my mother nor I had any trouble losing our "baby fat."

Vicki GerdingApple Valley

Tragic, but not criminal

George Zimmerman was charged with second degree murder in the death of Trayvon Martin. In Florida, second degree murder is defined as intentional and unlawful killing without justification, and conviction can bring up to 30 years in prison. When the charge was first announced a little over a year ago, a number of legal experts doubted a conviction would be returned because whatever happened on the night of Martin's death, it did not rise to the level of second degree murder.

The prosecution eventually believed the same thing since at trial, they asked that the jury be allowed to consider a lesser charge of manslaughter. Even so, although one juror after the trial said she thought Zimmerman "got away with murder," the jury did not believe the prosecution had proved its case and returned a verdict of not guilty.

A number of reasons have been suggested for why the prosecution failed to prove its case. The simplest would seem to be that the prosecution, for whatever reasons, overreached in charging Zimmerman with second degree murder. Perhaps Zimmerman should have never been charged in the first place. It is probably fair to say that Martin's death was a tragedy, but not all tragedies are crimes.

William S. LaSorApple Valley

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Re: "Think again" (Michael Maher, Letters, July 30).

Michael Maher asks why the stand your ground laws are not "obscene," and quotes two recent cases as to why he thinks they are.

In the Martin/Zimmerman case, despite jurors who come out with their own interpretation after the fact, and as unpalatable as the verdict was to some, the prosecution failed the Martin family due to filing the wrong charges, and then failed to present its case. Jurors did their job, because they couldn't convict based on the evidence they were given. That's the way a trial under the auspices of our justice system works.

As to Marissa Alexander, where Mr. Maher bemoans that she's serving a 20-year term for defending herself against continued violent abuse from her spouse, a small fact that Mr. Maher neglected to include was that when Ms. Alexander felt threatened in this instance, she actually left the scene to retrieve a gun from a different room, returned, then pointed and fired it in the direction of her husband and two children.

If she had killed him, she might have been put on trial for premeditated murder, but perhaps with everyone knowing of all that abuse, she might not. Her sentence for being a poor marksman, while tragic, has nothing to do with stand your ground laws, but everything to do with Florida's 10-20-Life laws that are on the books, and prosecutors who vigorously and egregiously pursued charges against her. Mr. Maher should direct his anger not at stand your ground laws, but at the sentences meted out.

So don't call a law "obscene" that protects everyday people from the now all too prevalent thuggery on the streets, and may give the hooligans pause; better judged by twelve than carried by six is, I believe, the old saw.

Andrew HowardApple Valley

• Send letters to swilliams@vvdailypress.com

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